FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

Point made. Granted, with Shocklean undertones.

 

And...?

 

How is that Obama's fault?

 

I agree. The payroll tax holiday put money directly into the hands of lower- and middle-class people, who turn around and spend every dime of it. That's something that's been sorely lacking in our recovery efforts.

A similar line of reasoning holds for infrastructure projects that put/keep middle class people in jobs. Growth comes from the middle out rather than top down. There's no such thing as a job creator, as we've found out.

 

You didn't, but my post was a response to an argument that Obama was the most fiscally irresponsible president in history because he invests in green energy.

 

I don't think you can look at that in a vacuum.

What was the return on investment of that debt? That's the question you need to know first.

Well over 6 percent of my personal income goes to paying interest on debts. (Back of the napkin calculation: 12-13 percent of gross pay.)

And every penny was worth it.

 

Of course not. His jabs are aimed only at those who have spoken against gay marriage (as it is currently being forced upon us as a "we-the-psuedo-inclusives-select-what-is marriage liberty" proposition).

 

Sure I can. GWB left our country in a position in which to stave off a far worse crisis we needed to spend to save entire industries and keep as many people in jobs and homes as possible. Jobs and saving peoples lives necessarily take priority over deficit reduction in a situation like that which we faced. There's no question the deficit needs to be reduced over the longterm but to cut too quickly would be to repeat the mistakes that have been made in Europe.

 

So what you're saying is, it would have been more helpful to the middle class had he never cut the payroll tax to begin with?

 

Debt isn't an automatic bad. The vast majority of people wouldn't have a car or a house without debt. And, what Cran said.

 

Is the deficit today higher or lower than when Obama took office?

 

I don't that anybody is fine with it. But to be politically serious about solving it, you have to work on both revenue and cuts. Anybody who has worked for a newspaper knows that cutting your way out of financial problems is nothing but a death spiral. And doing nothing but taxing and spending, particularly when you can't print money, is what gets us such great institutions as the state of Illinois.

The point for Obama regarding sequestration negotiations is this -- he is offering a mix of revenue increases (you can call them tax increases if you wish, since "closing loopholes" effectively raises taxes) and budget cuts. The House Republicans, some of the people whose Constitutional duty it is to decide this stuff, want nothing but cuts -- EXCEPT they don't want to put forward a plan for how to do that responsibility because they know even Tea Partiers want the snow plowed off the streets and the garbage picked up. (OK, I know they're not federal duties, but I'm rolling here... .)

The amazing thing is that Congresspeople, some of the same ones who feel like Obama is the Kenyan Usurper Communist Mooslim Dictator, WANT to have Obama be the decision-maker on what gets cut and what taxes get raised. Actually, not really the decision-maker. They want Obama to propose his plan so they can vote on it, reject it, and harrumph to the rubes back home how they put it to the Kenyan Usurper Communist Mooslim Dictator. (That was the bill Senate Republicans tried and failed to launch the other night.)

For all the budget-cutting bluster, Republicans are DESPERATE not to put any specifics on the table because they know -- at least Boehner knows -- you can't balance the budget without raises taxes, which people don't like, and cutting popular programs, especially fast-growing ones that involve old people, which a lot of the Republican base REALLY doesn't like. So instead of solving the problem, we get all these manufactured crises and fires that are doing more than any one thing to create business and market uncertainty, which presumably the Republican CEO base is against.